Category: The House of Hanover

Like two Stuart princesses before her, George II’s eldest daughter, Anne, married into the Dutch Royal Family, taking her place as the Princess of Orange. The marriage wasn’t her first choice, but it was her best shot at not ending up a spinster at her detested brother’s court. Unfortunately, though blessed with her mother’s intellect, she inherited her father’s social charm.

The story of the American Revolution is integral to the psychology of today’s United States, though it has in many respects become just that – a story – and the foundations on which it sprouted roots are made up of equal parts fact and, well, let’s say convenient omissions. For one, this was less a “revolution” than it was a civil war – English colonists were of course British citizens, but some 100,000 of those colonists fled the colonies for England when they saw which way the wind was blowing.

As of today, we have officially covered all six of George III’s daughters! Our current subject, Elizabeth, fell right in the middle of the Georgian princesses and made up the youngest of the elder trio.

I was originally going to cover the English Reformation in the mid-1530s today, but I we’ve done a lot on the Tudors recently and I thought it might be a bit of a palate cleanser to turn instead to the 18th century and cover a lesser-known princess, a daughter of George II who married into the Danish Royal Family.

On January 23, 1820 Queen Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent, died prematurely at the age of 52. He was followed to the grave just six days later by his father, George III, who had been mentally incapacitated for years. At just seven months old, the then-Princess Victoria of Kent became third-in-line to the throne following her uncles, King George IV and Princes Frederick, Duke of York and William, the Duke of Clarence. All three were childless.

Her mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, found herself at the age of 34 twice-widowed and the mother of three children, one of whom she was responsible for molding into a future British monarch. She herself was German – indeed, at the time of her second husband’s death she had not yet fully mastered the English language.

We’ve covered almost all of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz’s children, but we’ve paid very little attention to the Queen herself. Thanks to her children and her famous granddaughter, Queen Victoria, Charlotte is best-known in history as an aging matriarch, emblematic of the phrase, “Misery loves company.” But when you consider the role of her marriage in her life, it allows room for greater empathy when considering the often strident role she took in the lives of her adult children later on.

The last time we touched on Caroline of Ansbach we were covering her and her husband’s horrific relationship with their eldest son, Prince Frederick of Wales. It’s a period of time in which Caroline is hardly shown in a positive light, but what makes this particular queen so difficult is that when you set that relationship aside, she was an incredibly compelling woman with any number of admirable qualities. Today, we’re going to cover her life leading up 1714, when her father-in-law, George I, ascended the British throne.

Of all of George III’s 15 children, only one managed to produce another sovereign – Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent. Save the last 18 months of his life, very little would give you the idea he had either the motivation or capability of doing so and, indeed, it is perhaps for the best (albeit tragic) that he never had the opportunity to mold the character of his more famous daughter.

As we find ourselves in the middle of the second season of Victoria, it seemed as good a time as any to take a look at Queen Victoria’s relationship with her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. The ITV/PBS show has depicted a dynamic in which the young queen was in love with her PM – at one point even proposing marriage. And by all appearances, the affection was mutual, at least on our television screens. The reality was obviously by far different, but this storyline is grounded in a kernel of truth – the relationship between the two always prompted some raised eyebrows.

Like all the daughters of George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Princess Mary’s life was a little bit tragic and a little bit mundane. Born in April 1776, Mary was the first of her parents’ children to arrive in the middle of the American Revolution. Ten other children preceded her in the royal nursery, but few of them would be able to match Mary in confidence or spirit, both of which may very well have stemmed from the fact she was early on considered the most attractive of her siblings.